Track Built and First Races in the Bag
You guys have created a monster. I have my first track built. I had some scrap wood from a project, and a few zips of the circular saw later, I have a track. It is only running about 13' 6" right now, but I can expand to 15' later. Instead of waiting on the kids, I raced them tonight. I was at the store and found the '09 Corvette Sting Ray Concept. I had already purchase the Dodge Viper SRT10 ARC ao why not match'em up. The Sting Ray won in a fairly tight race (2 of 3). I had sixteen other races, but that was by far my main event.
Thanks for putting me on to the track construction. The kids are going to love it. I gave my son (2 years of age) a couple of pieces of track, and he will not stop playing with it, and my girl (5 years of age) keeps asking for pink cars.
Discussion
I also just built my first track last night! took your how-to and made it up. MAN ITS FAST! I am having troubles keeping the cars on the track though, mostly the outsides (i made a 4 lane instead of 2) It seems a couple sections are snagging the cars and throwing them off and once they start wobbling half way down its all over. And usually take out 1 or all of the other racers.
up to about 120 cars also. Its amazing the difference between this track and my old HW 4-lane drag strip made of fold out hard plastic. The crap cars I had on the old track are burning up the new track!
Also got my 5 year old daughter playing, she is loving it! But also wants purple and pink cars. Going to take my first stab at painting some doubles this weekend with her I think. What is a good way to strip the paint?
Slash, I can send you to a website that the people here forwarded me to, it's http://hotworldcustoms.com/
It looks like it has a lot of good information on modding there, including stripping. Just click on "stripping" on the left side menu.
There's also a painting guide at the Redline Derby blog. HotWorldCustoms is a good site for picking up customizing tips. That's where I learned techniques for stripping and painting. But they give you a lot of options, which is good, whereas my guide outlines what has worked well for me.
Check out the Redline post:
http://www.redlinederby.com/custom-painting-your-cars/
@Slash - About the cars coming off the track...take a look at the transition from the hill into the long stretch, this is where I've found most of the crashing happens (shy of banging into track joints). If the transition is too steep the cars will "bounce" right off the track with all the speed coming down the hill.
Change the angle of your hill until you find one that your cars like. This is something I'm going to look at with my own track before the next racing season.
One nice thing about the fold-up track is you can make that adjustment easily. I'd love to have a pinewood derby style track that has a curved hill, but given time, effort, and space, the fold-up is what I have to work with.
Here are a couple of links to pics of my track. I used adhesive velcro at the transition area to keep things in place and I also put some soft material under the transition to absorb the shock and keep the cars from jumping.
http://redlineracing.ning.com/forum/topics/four-by-24-ready-to-race
http://redlineracing.ning.com/forum/topics/my-new-track-on-derby-day
Hope this helps!
Glad to hear the racing bug has bitten! And it sounds like everyone is having fun. I know the holy grail of tracks is as long as possible, but I really enjoy the short track (< 20 ft) racing.
If you don't mind, snap some photos of your track and share a few. It's always great to see custom tracks.